Never mind that I prefaced my exposition by saying it applies to the best of all possible worlds, if and only if . . . . It’s a meaningless qualification to put forth, the entire project is meaningless, while Rome is burning. Also, never mind that there are reasons, good reasons, why the peoples and the governments of the world ought to unite in a common cause in order to forestall whatever dangers or challenges face humankind in this or the next generation. People don’t usually do what they ought to just because there are good reasons for them to do so, only when they are compelled to so act; so that’s another moot point, I’m afraid, to add to the aforementioned irrelevancy. Indeed, it’s a height of folly to be engaging in armchair philosophizing in times such as these, a luxury I can’t possibly afford, and I must thank my critics for pointing it out. So it’s back to the drawing board, I guess.

In the course of the ensuing exchange, I’ve been introduced to a number of radical texts and sources I had no idea existed. Of the latter, the most prolific was Tiqqun, a French philosophical journal with strong anarchistic leanings and, quite understandably, anonymous in authorship. Some of the texts which made an indelible impression were: ”The Coming Insurrection,”, an anarchist manifesto made popular by Glenn Beck’s hysteria about the world coming to an end; ”Introduction To Civil War,” a blueprint for anarchistic activity and program; “This Is Not a Program,” a redefinition of the kind of conflict facing us and the struggle ahead; and lastly, “How is it to be done?” which turns the idea of revolutionary struggle on its virtual head.

Of the numerous texts I’ve been introduced to, ”The Politics of Incivility: Autonomia and Tiqqun” is the most scholarly and down-to-earth, while “How is it to be done?” is the epitome of the poetic and the ephemeral. The first is a no-nonsense account of the momentous events in Northern Italy in the spring and summer of 1969, events which, in no uncertain terms, have disproved Marx’s thesis of class struggle, or updated it, in any case; the second reads like apocalyptic literature from way back when, like a Book of Revelations minus some of the symbolism and hidden meanings.

To give you an idea, here are some excerpts from the cited works:

From whatever angle you approach it, the present offers no way out. This is not the least of its virtues. From those who seek hope above all, it tears away every firm ground. Those who claim to have solutions are contradicted almost immediately. Everyone agrees that things can only get worse. ‘The future has no future’ is the wisdom of an age that, for all its appearance of perfect normalcy, has reached the level of consciousness of the first punks.

– from The Coming Insurrection

Historical conflict no longer opposes two massive molar heaps, two classes — the exploited and the exploiters, the dominant and dominated, managers and workers —between which, in each individual case, it would be possible to differentiate. The front line no longer cuts through the middle of society; it now runs through each one of us. . .

– from This Is Not a Program

Society no longer exists, at least in the sense of a differentiated whole. There is only a tangle of norms and mechanisms through which THEY hold together the scattered tatters of the global biopolitical fabric, through which THEY prevent its violent disintegration. Empire is the administrator of this desolation, the supreme manager of a process of listless implosion.

– from Introduction to Civil War

Empire means that in all things the political moment dominates the economic one. A general strike is helpless against this. What must be opposed to Empire is a human strike. Which never attacks relations of production without attacking at the same time the affective knots which sustain them . . . . There is a whole new Luddism to be invented, a Luddism of the human machinery that feeds Capital.

– from How is it to be done?

Where does the truth lie? one may ask. How much of it is sheer poetry and how much pure fact? A more fruitful question might be: What’s going on here?

Well, for one thing, what I do believe we’re seeing is an honest-to-goodness attempt to re-invent the right kind of language, a kind of language that would reflect and deal with the present-day realities because the old ways of talking and thinking have been found wanting. The following passage from The Coming Insurrection makes it abundantly clear:

There will be no social solution to the present situation. First, because the vague aggregate of social milieus, institutions, and individualized bubbles that is called, with a touch of antiphrasis, “society,” has no consistency. Second, because there’s no longer any language for common experience. And we cannot share wealth if we do not share a language. It took half a century of struggle around the Enlightenment to make the French Revolution possible, and a century of struggle around work to give birth to the fearsome “welfare state.” Struggles create the language in which a new order expresses itself. But there is nothing like that today. Europe is now a continent gone broke that shops secretly at discount stores and has to fly budget airlines if it wants to travel at all. No “problems” framed in social terms admit of a solution. The questions of “pensions,” of “job security,” of “young people” and their “violence” can only be held in suspense while the situation these words serve to cover up is continually policed for signs of further unrest. Nothing can make it an attractive prospect to wipe the asses of pensioners for minimum wage. Those who have found less humiliation and more advantage in a life of crime than in sweeping floors will not turn in their weapons, and prison won’t teach them to love society. Cuts to their monthly pensions will undermine the desperate pleasure-seeking of hordes of retirees, making them stew and splutter about the refusal to work among an ever larger section of youth. And finally, no guaranteed income granted the day after a quasi-uprising will be able to lay the foundation of a new New Deal, a new pact, a new peace. The social feeling has already evaporated too much for that.

Fair enough. Lest we get carried away, however, let’s be mindful of Foucault’s admonition not to be overwhelmed by the “narcissism of the present,” the temptation to see the present as the apocalyptic realization of some general ontological or human condition. As Jason Read puts it in “A Million Blooms: Tiqqun and Negri on the Actualization of Ontology,” a commentary on How is it to be done?:

Alienation and production, the common and isolation, exist in different articulations, different modifications, throughout history. This is not to say that “there is nothing new under the sun,” but that what exists is not the realization of some hidden tendency, just the rearticulation of already existing forces.

Another thing to consider: To what extent, if any, are these texts representative of the universal human condition rather than lamentations over the badly damaged Western psyche?

It comes as no surprise that their point of origin was mostly French, admittedly the locus and site of the highest form of civilization ever known to humankind. It only stands to reason that, just as in the case of their colonial misadventures, it were the French who felt most guilty for their trespasses and misdeeds and most eager therefore to make emendations, it’s no different now: a sense of guilt, especially when experienced by the most cultured and the most civilized, can be a powerful motivator indeed. But if that’s the case, then we certainly must distance ourselves from this particular perspective and program for, in being regional and not universal (idiosyncratic may be a better term), it certainly misses the point. And we must likewise distance ourselves from all appeals to repair or to reconstitute our personal identity as part of the solution, the Charles Taylor grand project (see, for instance, Philosophy And The Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 or Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity, both of which espouse a reconstruction of our identities as a solution), for underneath it all, however well intended or thought-through, it also fails to address the human condition in universal rather than regional terms, in terms, that is, which aim at repairing the damaged psyche in order to move on.

The point of contention is, not all identities may have been damaged enough to be in need of so severe a reconstruction or repair. It’s the exclusive province resulting from the age-old tradition of Western nations, I contend, the ancient Greeks included, which have made it their main business to colonize and to exploit the indigenous peoples the world over, whenever and wherever the conditions were ripe, as their main instrument of expansion. Only they bear the kind of guilt which comes from having done wrong, only their psyche stands in dire need of repair, a shock therapy. The indigenous peoples the world over, the colonized and the exploited ones, are just fine. Their identities are intact, much more intact and much more wholesome than we can possibly imagine!

This point I owe exclusively to Marthe Raymond, aka Moonraven. For better or worse, these are Marthe’s words:

I don’t see any of the French-based anarchy stuff paying off. It doesn’t interest me as my own brand of anarchy rises, as I have said a number of times, from the belief that the indigenous folks’ way of living as part of the world instead of working to subdue it is the only sustainable model. And it has sustained itself, despite the various genocidal campaigns to exterminate us and our way of seeing life on the planet. I remember when the big revisionist lie was that we beat all the woolly mammoths into extinction with clubs–how absurd, especially when you remember that only the white man has destroyed his potential food supply as well as his living space. Whites are a mutation within the species that has put all life forms at risk.

And further down:

A lot of the French stuff is pretty much reincarnating Che Guevara’s writings on guerrilla warfare. The French guy Regis Debray bears a lot of blame for his focus groups model–and Che’s ill-fated Bolivian caper which led to his death (AND to Debray’s being captured and tortured by the CIA when Che booted him out) is a good example of why focus groups do not work to promote revolution.

But nothing will happen in the US. I remember posting a quick and easy model for bringing down the US government maybe in about 2006 and folks pissed their pants right there in virtual space because “some people might get killed”. Chickenshits talking about the need for revolution–save me.

Save us all….

I can’t help but to concur. And if she’s right, then perhaps Franz Fanon rather than Michel Foucault should be the voice we ought to heed here and now for having a better grasp of the human condition in the present, the wars of liberation and against colonialism, against oppression and domination worldwide, promising to be the major form of struggle for times to come, the Marxist or anarchist theories, both products of the decadent West, necessarily taking a back seat, always welcome to follow the liberation struggle but never to lead. Indeed, perhaps there can be no such thing as a comprehensive theory of the revolution in the absence of a universal theme uniting all struggling peoples the world over, in the absence of a “language for common experience” – only strategies and tactics. The theorist in me cringes at the very thought, but face the facts I must.

Can the language barrier possibly be overcome? Is a universal theory of the revolution possible under the circumstances or is it just a pie in the sky? Can the West and the East put aside their cultural and ethnic differences and rise together against the common oppressor, or are they destined to pursue their own destinies independently of one another?

In articles to follow, I intend to pursue these and related topics for your and my own edification. Meanwhile, I can’t help but wonder how my anarchist project, so perfect in design, or so I thought, only awaiting proper execution, could have gotten so derailed.

Good article. I haven’t yet finished the citations. But here’s one of Chris Hedges':

“In “Les Misérables” Victor Hugo described war with the poor as one between the “egoists” and the “outcasts.” The egoists, Hugo wrote, had “the bemusement of prosperity, which blunts the sense, the fear of suffering which is some cases goes so far as to hate all sufferers, and unshakable complacency, the ego so inflated that is stifles the soul.” The outcasts, who were ignored until their persecution and deprivation morphed into violence, had “greed and envy, resentment at the happiness of others, the turmoil of the human element in search of personal fulfillment, hearts filled with fog, misery, needs, and fatalism, and simple, impure ignorance.”

Here in the embers of your old discussion I feel that I am not disturbing the fires of your present discussion elsewhere. I will remain behind and comment after your fellow travelers are done… so I dont interrupt your brainstorming while it is happening. After you read this I think you will agree it is better this way.

First, I don’t like your introduction, in so many words: “The last article was a mistake because people didn’t like it.” Yarg! You should never cast aside your hard work just to placate disgruntled people. I found some of those disgruntled commenters to be the most shallow, not understanding what you were asking for and not caring to understand, the type of person who ought to be dispatched with a good dose of irony. You are a little too nice, maybe because you want more people engaged with you? If what you really want is to be more popular you should have picked a different philosophy. Being an Anarchist is like being a Protestant. One has thrown out the ‘lets all stick together so we can validate our vague belief by sheer numbers’ for the sake of ‘here is what I think the scripture means, and until proven otherwise… dont ask me to settle for a dilution of it’

But taking a principled stand like that takes some development and maturity or it is mere dogmatism. Conservatives, especially on talk radio, might present one fact but then leap into an unreasonable, unnatural, and unkind stance. I must turn them off for 10 minutes before coming back and hoping to hear something worthwhile. This article of yours swerves into that sort of trouble. In your last article I was agreeing with you in principle but amending or warning of some potential errors, but today I wave your plane off entirely because I think you are coming in too hot and you are coming across the wind of you own first principles.

I found much food for thought in this article, but better enjoyed the first one. In your first article I saw you completely committed to a just global peace that is the presumed ground for anarchism, groping around possible pitfalls of world federation, inviting others into the process(which is perfect because that is just how a federation has to form. I love it when the mode of discussion reflects the process under discussion) and I was happy and curious as I read it. In this current article I see that process thrown overboard, and your idealism, which in the first article hovered with the thoughtfulness of a cat before it steps in a shallow puddle, now here suddenly you eject all prudence and splash down into a deep pothole. Just because some of your fellow traveler’s didn’t approve or your first thoughtfulness?

Well, that might have been be a bit too harsh. Especially if you really believe what you wrote in this article. In which case we will have a good argument about it. A good argument is more beneficial than an artificial agreement, yes? And you would rather lose an argument that you really believed in, than win an argument by co-opting yourself?
Me too. Looking forward to it.

ozarkmichael

“Empire means that in all things the political moment dominates the economic one. A general strike is helpless against this. What must be opposed to Empire is a human strike. Which never attacks relations of production without attacking at the same time the affective knots which sustain them.”

‘Attacking the affective knots’ is a fine phrase which conjures a tangled physical mess in such a way that it cries out for the tangle to be cut away.

What you hasten to cut asunder, I would pause and wonder about for a moment. The “affective knots” are all those habitual, traditional, cultural connections which are maintained by a sort of love, which means they are the property of a community. Affectie knots are developed by a communal process over thousands of years, and each generation contributes, and then hands it down to the next generation. Partaking is not necessarily a rational process, but it is primarily an emotional(affective) process.

The ‘affective knots’ can thus be said to be an accumulation of wisdom from the past which is readily available for the common man(since it does not require an intellectual to tap into this wisdom), existing uniquely in each locale on the planet where human beings gather together. To borrow from Lincoln, these “mystic chords” of affection are a type of archetypical memory which are touched by the better angels of our nature.

If I was to “attack”(even accidently) the “affective knots” on another culture, you would rightfully raise hell over it. To attack the “affective knots” that knit another culture together is like defacing an artifact. Who has the right to destroy the irreplaceable? You would call it “capitalist imperialism” in effect even if i did it for other reasons. You would point out that no one has the right to make such a judgment of superiority over and against others, to ruin(even accidently) their heritage, which steals from children their cultural birthright. Very well. I agree.

But here you are now, knowingly(for it is no accident) planning the same process for a different culture. Ours. You propose to “attack the affective knots” that hold things together for us. You propose to tear asunder the loving relations between people as well as destroy the stabilizing relations between people and their institutions, thus stealing the cultural heritage and birthright from future generations forever.

Against this I must protest.

troll

I wonder if some affective knots within our culture might not be a collection of stupidities accumulated over generations and how one might tell the difference.

ozarkmichael

Those are two big questions.
Let me start with something positive. The mistakes of the past, and all forms of stupidity and foolishness, probably have as much impact on a culture as the successes. The bad outcomes gradually turned into the mythical stories, folklore, and proverbs that every culture has.
However, your question assumes the negative… that the evolution of one’s own culture takes wrong turns, which is a remarkable and unusual judgement for you to make. Interestingly, your unusual questioning has the distinctinction of arising from the Western tradition. In other words, the questioning of one’s own culture and the power for an individual to judge one’s own culture… is part of our culture.
I wonder if you can tell me if that questioning is a positive part of our culture, as I have outlined above, or the questioning is a negative part(a wrong turn) that your question insists upon? How do you tell the difference?

troll

Good morning ozarkmichael. First, I note the shift to the past tense in your, “The bad outcomes gradually turned into the mythical stories, folklore, and proverbs that every culture has.” What of those that are ongoing?

Next, as my questions to you essentially were if what you’re calling wrong turns are possible and how one could tell a right turn from a wrong one, you’ve gone a bit overboard in your response.

Finally, imo, the questioning you describe is a positive part of our culture even if hardly unique to it.

troll

ozarkmichael, I realize that I haven’t answered your last (parroted) question. I’ll have to consider what I could say about it that would make sense to you, as the short form is that it’s an aesthetic thing in large part, I guess.

ozarkmichael

I think if we are talking about “evolution”, it could be that we who stand in the present make a judgment of the past

ozarkmichael

The question is “how can culture take a wrong turn”?

I mentioned evolution, which is a past process with a present mechanism, but that isn’t appealing to me right now because it is too technical. My phrase of “evolution taking a wrong turn” was a bit tongue in cheek, an attempt to make it difficult ground for you to cross. You wisely noted the present tense and pounced upon it.

If I may propose a better model of how the “affective knots” (informed by culture, religion, and tradition) are formed over time and how they relate to an action in the present, and then in each case frame how they can be judged to be wrong.

An ocean wave rolls towards the coast. That crest of the wave is the present. Each of us perform on the crest…in a chaotic tumble… good and bad, beneficial and harmful actions. Beneath the crest is our recent past, where the results of our actions are still being tossed this way and that by the flux of undertow and overriding currents. We claim to know just what this recent level means, but it is compromised, murky, and unsettled, meaning there are shifts in how they are understood. In truth we are still reflecting on them.

Beneath that is the sand, the semi-solid ground, where the settling sediment of the past is deposited. And out deep the ocean water is clear, and the ground is (metaphorically) hard and firm. This would be the global archetype of what we are biologically, or God’s understanding of how we ought to be.

So now we have a framework to discuss “stupidity and wrongness”. The present turbulent actions certainly invite(actually they demand) criticism. This criticism is actually a job that culture performs fairly well. We humans encourage or criticize each other’s manners as we interact. We feel immediate effects of actions, and negotiate the changing situations. We often claim to be judging by the deepest and clearest principles, but we probably are in fact on murky semisolid ground. nevertheless, behind it all, supporting human relations.. is the deep water and solid ground of God or biology, or both.
What I want to say is that our present actions aren’t culture, although they are informed by and criticized by culture. Our recent actions are culture, but not in a settled way. We are still reflecting and arguing about them. Our understanding is certainly cultural, but in the moment it is a bit superficial. The greater weight of culture is from the distant past, and further out where some stuff is so settled that humans everywhere know it. We take it for granted. It is something everyone appreciates but cannot encompass. It is also something we must get back to, something we must strive for, something that we believe we are upholding when we argue over stupidity.

ozarkmichael

The above post of mine committed two blunders. First, I ran two categories together(actions and relations) as if they are the same thing. My mistake. All for the sake of sketching a more “fluid” understanding of culture which is yet another mistake since I was originally proposing that affective knots(relations) are a deeply settled affair.
Yarg.

troll

If cultural issues – affective knots – are decided at such a deep level, how vulnerable to anarchist action are they, really? If we judge upon arrival and reflection, what’s the worry?

ozarkmichael

Even if we derive relations from the deepest water, the most solid ground, our conscious judgments about these things are usually made from merely decades old turbulence or maybe only the present froth.

Sometimes new arrangements should be sought for because the current ones are too informed by recent fads or are forced upon us, in which case the relations that we support today obliterate the deeper, truer relations. So there is plenty of room to play.

Why am I agreeing with you? Well, two conservative mainstays: institutional repair and the more drastic “Reformation”… are based on moral judgments that reject current relations for the sake of improvement. So my ‘evolution’ concept was going to tie my own hands. It just wasn’t fair for you to deal with a constraint that I wouldn’t want upon myself.

I had things nicely stacked with the evolution concept since there is no way for you to make moral judgments about evolution. As a debater I should just sit back and let you work your way around it alone.

But I dropped out of troll mode and climbed into the trap with you. Because I believe things should be equal. Whatever constraint I placed upon you I ought to place upon myself. I realized that culture has a constant moral function: to judge action… and relations. So using an amoral/scientific model(evolution) for affective knots seemed incomplete.

troll

So, sounds like if we move away from the hyperbolic image of the Anarchist chopping the knots and discuss the issue in terms of modification and reform, then we’re all good on this.

troll

Perhaps when anarchists get control of atomics and can rearrange the contours of the ocean bottom, then it’ll make sense to harbor your concerns about them. For now, it seems that governments are the ones with the power to actually sever our affective knots, and a sensible reform would be to strip such power away from them.

ozarkmichael

True, but the ‘we’ includes “moonraven” (Marthe Raymond) and roger(Roger N) and I am not sure yet whether this was hyperbole for them.

troll

Apples and cumquats. Marthe is a member of a tribe whose affective knots and, indeed, physical existence were hacked through (though not completely severed) by European disease and invasion. Little wonder that her politics would form around a desire to return the favor. Roger suffers from the discomfort of excess empathy, I guess, perhaps, in his case, because he was uprooted at a tender age and forced to accommodate new affects.

ozarkmichael

You seem to propose that we treat them like children, as lost souls merely tossed about by the circumstances of life, and thus unable to control themselves or discern the consequences of their own words.

I disagree. Lets assume they are intelligent human beings who mean what they say. Lets assume that Marthe and roger can think their way forward just as well as anyone. That is not an insult, that’s a compliment.
The odd thing about this article is that after all the strenuous comments against the prior federalism, all the corrections and books recommended to correct roger’s error, there is no objection to this article at all. Are the readers treating roger as a child, perceiving that he is wrong but letting it pass because they know he cant do better… or do they agree with what he is saying? I am betting its the latter.
You might wish to differentiate yourself, but under the umbrella of this article everyone is quiet and content to be a cumquat. I take them seriously, and underlying my critique is a hidden compliment: that they are intellectuals whose rational power can overcome a tempest of circumstance.

troll

Sorry that you take it that way. I in no way intended to infantilize them nor to denigrate their intelligences. However, I will withdraw now and consider to what extent I think your criticism of my pov is on target and what that implies. Thanks for the conversation.

ozarkmichael

Before you go, please read this.
Even though you are ‘troll’ you seem to be a peacemaker, while I am the one accusing and stirring things up. Also, I am not giving any indication that we must weigh my weighty accusations of potential fault against the Radicals against the present weighty faults that the system deals out in actuality.

also, thanks for the info. about where people come from and what they have been through. I ought not absolutely dismiss that, but I did. Apologies.

Here you have been not only polite, but standing in for others as I accuse them. That is how humans should be for each other. (Not the accusing, but the defense)

roger nowosielski

Michael.

The purpose of my citations from Tiqun was only to air out alternative approaches as to how some of the Western radicals propose to deal with “the Empire” (as opposed to some of the more traditional modes of resistance). The article was exploratory in nature. Further, rather than having endorsed all those approaches (some of them I haven’t sufficiently internalized in order to be able to do such a thing), the article represents a transition point, to explore the kinds of struggle that some of those Western radicals regards as obsolete.. Hence the subtitle of the immediately following piece: “One size doesn’t fit all.” If you’ll reread the present article with this object in mind, I.m certain you’ll see my point.

This article needs further criticism, needed it for 3 months. Everyone knew the potential danger of global federalism and registered their criticism there, the result seems to be an about face by roger, and here he quotes from the lessons recommended by those readers. I quote:

“Empire means that in all things the political moment dominates the economic one. A general strike is helpless against this. What must be opposed to Empire is a human strike. Which never attacks relations of production without attacking at the same time the affective knots which sustain them . . . . There is a whole new Luddism to be invented, a Luddism of the human machinery that feeds Capital.”

“a Luddism against the human machinary” goes a bit further than merely severing relationships between human beings. It growls against the human beings themselves. This recalls Lenin’s theorizing. It was callous, hateful, and dehumanizing. Lenin’s theorizing triumphed through the support of anarchists and many others, including Trotsky. Lenin’s theorizing attained its ultimate result in Stalin,: a widespread and perpetual Luddism against human machinery. Millions upon millions in Labor camps, millions upon millions chained down and executed in the Gulags.

If, like Lenin, you formulate destructive theory, in time you will, like Trotsky, have to deal harshly with resistance from the very people you are supposedly helping. It will do no good at that time to withdraw your support. And after you win, to solidify your gains, you will, like Stalin, need to keep many people chained down.

But whatever dehumanizing threats you approve of theoretically now, whatever harshness employ in the expediency of triumph, whatever chains you apply to others… that dehumanizing, that harshness and those chains will be placed upon you as well. That is what Stalin did to his fellows. Yes, he even went after every last anarchist, and his good buddy Trotsky. And thus we all will be stuck with unforeseen problems far worse than anything we complain about today before the revolution occurs. When i say “stuck”, I dont mean briefly. Anarcho/Communism does not burn itself out in a few years the way Fascism does. Sometimes when Radicals talk about ‘getting it right this time’, they might speak theoretically, but the real point seems to be to make it stick once and for all. That is frightening. At least to me. It seems to not bother the anarchists in the least.

Now more questions: Why was everyone so quick to remediate the evils of roger’s federalism but couldn’t work up any critique about this new Luddism? A theory which will be very destructive, not merely of ‘affective knots’, but of human life! And not for a day, but for generations. Is it just taken for granted that this is what anarchists must do to succeed?

troll

Yes, it would be ridiculous to try to follow the Soviet model.

troll

You do raise an interesting point about the radical movement, generally. Personally, I don’t see the ‘enemy of my enemy’ necessarily as a friend whose goals I need further. So I have no interest is working toward a supposedly transitional Socialist period. Others’ mileage varies, clearly.

I’m not clear where you get the idea that radicals think that they’ll ‘get it right for all times’ this time.

ozarkmichael

“You do raise an interesting point about the radical movement, generally. Personally, I don’t see the ‘enemy of my enemy’ necessarily as a friend whose goals I need further”

Apple, meet cumquat. Ah, I see you already know each other.

I cant ask for more than that from you. Furthermore, I ought not ask for you to defend yourself against my cumquat accusations, but I probably will. Apologies in advance.

“I’m not clear where you get the idea that radicals think that they’ll ‘get it right for all times’ this time.”

I have never met a Radical who understands that a potential whether they are headed that direction, except for those few who actually intend to go the Soviet way but they assure me that they will get it right this time, and it will be permanent.

bliffle

Looks like BCs move to ‘disqus’ has killed ‘Politics’. Maybe that was the point. BC is now as boring as all the other discussion sites, and mostly serves as a commercial launchpad for various entertainment ventures. Too bad.